


A Mysterious Package

by seaholly



Series: Guiding Hand [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A brief episode of role reversal, But only for the purposes of demonstration, Caning, Corporal Punishment, Cuddling, Discipline, M/M, Pre-Slash, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 21:20:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaholly/pseuds/seaholly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John receives a mysterious package. Sherlock is none too pleased with the contents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mysterious Package

 

When John Watson returned to 221B Baker Street after a boring but necessary excursion to the shops, he hadn’t been expecting to find a package waiting for him. Contrary to his expectations, however, there was one.

He’d decided that he had to go to the shops after they’d run out of food again that morning. The breakfast supplies Mrs Hudson had brought them yesterday had barely lasted until then; they’d had ‘breakfast’ twice more yesterday before calling out for takeaway in the evening. There had been just enough left for one last actual breakfast, but then they really had been completely out of food, so John had dutifully headed out to remedy the problem.

He probably should have gone yesterday, but yesterday had turned out to be an exercise in consummate laziness, taken up mainly by naps and eating and watching bad telly. Sherlock had been his usual completely overtired self after a case was over, worn out from not eating and not sleeping and running around like a maniac, and John hadn’t been far behind him. In fact they had both been so knackered that even after sleeping through the night, their first nap of the day—the oh-so-condescending ‘cuddle time’ nap—had lasted until early afternoon.

Amusingly, John had woken up from that nap to find that despite Sherlock’s protests about the name, he had rather embraced cuddle time, and in his sleep had snuggled himself about as close to John as it was possible to get. Not that John had minded. It had actually been rather nice to wake up with Sherlock wrapped around him. A little strange, maybe, but it was nice all the same, and John was secure enough in himself that apart from a few initial moments of confusion, he wasn’t about to argue with what felt nice. Waking up next to a warm body was certainly much more pleasant than waking up alone—John had woken up alone more than enough times to know that. There was a great deal to be said for the simple comfort of closeness to another person.

John had been lonely more than long enough to know that, too.

And it seemed Sherlock agreed. All right, he’d been asleep, but he’d been happy enough to be close even before that. Being asleep had just seemed to bring it out more honestly, and that only served to convince John even further that Sherlock _did_ enjoy physical contact, that underneath that front of self-imposed isolation, he _did_ want to be close to someone. It just had to be the right kind of close—and the right someone. Apparently, John fit the bill.

He found that to be a very pleasant thought. It would certainly be helpful in their new arrangement, but it was more than that. The idea of being able to give Sherlock something he needed, something no one else seemed to be able to give him, and knowing that Sherlock was trusting him—and only him—to do that . . . that felt good. It gave him a warm feeling somewhere deep down in his chest. And that sounded just bloody downright _soppy_ , but it was true.

He supposed it wasn’t really that surprising, either. He’d always liked helping people. That was why he’d wanted to be a doctor, and it was also a large part of why he’d joined the army. The adventure, sure, he’d wanted that too, no question, but it was the service that drew him just as much. He’d wanted to feel like he was doing something _good_.

Helping Sherlock solve crimes gave him that feeling, too. And helping Sherlock like this—giving the brilliant, barking mad genius who was his friend something that no one else could—that, too, made him feel like he was doing something good.

Of course, when Sherlock had woken up, he’d quickly untangled himself from John and proceeded to pretend that it had never happened. John hadn’t been surprised. It was going to take time for Sherlock to get used to this. Not to mention, Sherlock had fallen asleep denouncing cuddle time as being ‘insufferably condescending’. He’d probably thought it wouldn’t do at all to make out like he’d enjoyed it too much.

The rest of the day after that had been more of the same, a blissful (and well-deserved, John thought) study in idleness. They’d both been exhausted, although John had felt considerably better for a good night’s sleep and some food and a nap. They’d had lunch—although given what they’d had to eat it was more like midday breakfast—then he’d read the paper and watched telly, while Sherlock had gone back to sleep on the sofa. Then it had been rinse and repeat for what was left of the day, until after dinner John had finally encouraged a still sleepy Sherlock to actually go back to bed rather than spending the night in the living room again.

It had taken a bit of convincing, and John had had to use more than a hint of his Captain-Watson-giving-orders voice, but eventually Sherlock had hauled himself up from his prone position on the sofa and headed for his room with all the grace of a wobbly, overtired zombie. John had hastily gone after him, half-afraid that Sherlock would pitch over and crack his head open the way he was wavering, and had shored him up on one side until they reached the bed. He’d even tucked him in, which had earned him a sleepy, narrow-eyed look of confusion. Nothing more than that, though, since Sherlock had been asleep again almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

After that, John had watched approximately seventeen more minutes of telly before deciding that he might as well follow Sherlock’s example, and had gone upstairs to bed himself.

Today, though, he’d resolved to be more productive. He’d woken up feeling much better, and apparently so had Sherlock, since when John went downstairs he’d found him in the kitchen, awake, dressed and bent over some experiment. He was still pointedly not sitting down, but when John had enquired Sherlock had admitted that it felt better. John had made a mental note to insist that Sherlock let him have another look later, just to make sure, and then set about making coffee and breakfast.

Once that was done, and he’d actually taken stock of the miserably empty state of their cupboards and the fact that he’d used up the last of what Mrs Hudson had brought them on breakfast, he’d determined that a trip to the shops had to be first on his list of productive things.

And now he was home again, with food, and there was a package waiting for him.

John eyed it curiously as he came in. It was in the front hall, propped up neatly against the wall just beside the stairs, and yes, it definitely had his name on it. He put the shopping bags down and stepped closer, hesitating for a moment before rather gingerly picking it up.

It didn’t explode, so that was a plus, but it also didn’t help him to figure out what the hell it was. He hadn’t ordered anything—although that didn’t mean Sherlock hadn’t used his name for something. Still, this box didn’t look like it had come through the post. It had John’s name and address on it, printed out on a label, but that was all. No stamps, no postmarks, no return address, nothing. Just a long, narrow, plain brown box.

God, he hoped it wasn’t going to explode.

He shook it warily. Something inside rattled, just a bit, but the sound gave him no clues as to what it might be. Did bombs rattle? Did anthrax rattle? Or if it was something Sherlock had ordered—did dangerous chemicals and body parts rattle? And when, exactly, had he got quite this paranoid about perfectly innocent looking packages?

This was definitely a job for Sherlock. With any luck, it might even entertain him for five minutes.

Tucking the package under his arm, John retrieved the shopping bags from the floor and managed to juggle the lot up the stairs. He was pleased when he got to the top and the box still hadn’t exploded.

“I’ve got a mysterious package,” he said as he came into the kitchen, where Sherlock was still busily involved in doing something with his lab setup. “Don’t suppose you heard anyone deliver it?”

“No,” Sherlock said, looking up with vague interest. John put the bags down and held out the package to him, and Sherlock took it, eyed it for a moment and then gave it a shake.

“It rattles,” John told him.

“Yes, quite.”

“It was in the front hall,” he went on. “And I can’t think of anyone who’d hand-deliver a package to me without coming up to see if I was here, or at least leaving me a note with it.” He watched as Sherlock turned the package over in his hands, then asked hopefully, “Any idea what’s in it?”

“None,” Sherlock said, and breezed out into the living room with it.

John followed him, watching as Sherlock proceeded to examine it from all angles, while shaking it, prodding it and sniffing it at intervals.

“It didn’t come through the postal service, so hand-delivered, as you said.” Sherlock gave John a distractedly approving glance for being right about this. “But delivered quietly, while you weren’t here, without alerting anyone. A computer printed address label and no return; whoever sent it wants to be anonymous, at least until it’s opened. Deliberately plain packaging, the sort of box no one would look twice at, nothing on it to give any clue about what’s inside, except perhaps for the shape which may or may not be an accurate reflection of what’s in it. The label was put on by someone left-handed, and it’s been handled by a woman who wears expensive perfume. Not necessarily the same person.”

He shook the box again, more vigorously this time, holding it close to his ear and listening carefully. “Whatever’s inside rattles, but only slightly. It’s wood, not plastic, but something very light; there’s barely any weight to it. It’s been packed well to keep the movement to a minimum, but you can hear the rustle as the contents shift. Tissue paper.” He gave the box a last considering look and handed it back to John. “No idea apart from that. But it’s not going to explode.”

John had listened to this catalogue of deductions with interest, but since Sherlock hadn’t suddenly added x-ray vision to his repertoire of talents, it seemed the only way to find out what was in the package was to actually open it.

He eyed it dubiously for a moment more, then shrugged. “I’ll hold you to that,” he told Sherlock, meaning the not exploding part, and went in search of a knife to open the box with.

Thanks to Sherlock’s forensic analysis, John was unsurprised when opening the package revealed a mass of tissue paper inside. However, he was very surprised indeed when he began fishing around inside it and got his first look at what the tissue paper was packed around. “What the hell . . . ?”

His voice trailed off in disbelief. That couldn’t actually be what he thought it was, could it?

He fished deeper and grabbed the thing—or rather one of the things, bloody hell, there was more than one in there—and pulled it out, holding it up and surveying it with utter bewilderment.

It was a cane. Not a walking cane, oh no, nothing so normal as that. It was an honest-to-goodness, crook-handled _cane_ , the real thing, the kind that naughty kids had lived in fear of until they banned corporal punishment in schools. John had never even seen one of the bloody things in real life before, but he knew well enough what they looked like to recognise one when it was in front of him.

Someone had sent him a cane. No— _canes_ , plural. What. The. _Hell?_

He turned in total confusion to Sherlock, who had been hovering nearby watching as John opened the box. “What the hell?” he repeated, finding himself quite unable to think of anything else to say.

At least, not until he got a good look at Sherlock’s face. “Sherlock?” he asked in sudden concern. “Are you okay?”

No reply. Sherlock didn’t even look at him; he was too busy staring at the cane with an expression that was caught somewhere between shock and absolute outrage. Two high spots of colour had appeared in his cheeks, slowly spreading as John watched into a deepening flush. His mouth opened as if he was going to say something, but nothing came out. He looked lost for words. He also looked like he was about to blow a fuse. Several fuses.

And then he spun, made a lunge for the table, snatched his phone from on top of it and began texting furiously.

John watched this performance in silence, waiting until Sherlock seemed to have finally finished molesting his phone (or at least he’d stopped mashing at the buttons; that had been some of the angriest texting John had ever seen), before asking cautiously, “Who did you just text?”

Sherlock turned to look at him, cheeks still burning red, and said the name through gritted teeth. “Mycroft.”

“Mycroft,” John echoed. He looked down at the box, at the cane he was still holding, and then back up at Sherlock in surprise. “Mycroft sent this?”

“Of course he sent it!” Sherlock lunged for the box this time, snatching a small square card out of it and thrusting it at John’s face. “I know my own brother’s handwriting when I see it!”

John took the emphatically proffered card and turned it over. There was no signature, just a single sentence written in small, perfectly tidy handwriting.

_Use them with my compliments_.

John shook his head in disbelief. Canes from Mycroft—with his compliments, no less. Right, of course. The Holmes brothers were actively trying to drive him insane now.

“Not that I’d even need to see it,” Sherlock was muttering. “This is just like him. Smug, self-satisfied, overbearing—” He cut himself off abruptly and began texting again, attacking the phone as if it had been the one to send the canes.

John, meanwhile, was still stuck on the revelation that Mycroft had decided to send them a box of canes, and on the obvious question that went along with this revelation. “How did he know?”

“Because he spies on me.” Sherlock broke off texting long enough to answer in tones of mounting fury. “And on you. He spies on us! He knows everything I bloody do!”

He was almost shouting by the end, and John realised that they were right on the edge of another major Sherlock tantrum. Actually, looking at Sherlock’s face, they might already have gone over the edge. Definitely time to calm things down before something got broken—like Sherlock’s phone, for instance. Or Mycroft’s face, the next time Sherlock saw him.

“Okay,” he said, holding his hands up in a placating gesture, only to realise he was still holding the damn cane. He hastily put it down on the coffee table and tried again. “Okay, so he knows. If he really spies on us that much—” Which was a rather disturbing thought, but John ignored it in favour of trying to calm Sherlock down. “—then he was going to find out sooner or later. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything.”

“It does matter!” Sherlock snarled. “It matters a lot! This is _just like him!_ That—that— _bastard!_ ” He stamped a foot furiously on the floor for emphasis on the last word. “Oh, I hate him!”

Oh, yes, he was definitely having a tantrum now, foot-stamping and all. John realised he probably should have expected it the moment Mycroft’s name had been mentioned; the involvement of his brother was virtually guaranteed to make Sherlock volatile.

He was momentarily at a loss as to what he should do, apart from trying again to soothe Sherlock with words—in his own surprise he had forgotten about his new role as Sherlock’s Captain Authority Figure. But Sherlock’s petulant declaration of hating Mycroft abruptly put everything back into place. Lessons from his own childhood came instantly to the forefront of his mind, and before John even really registered what he was doing he had crossed to where Sherlock was standing and smacked his backside, not hard, but firmly. Sherlock gave a startled little yelp and stared at him in astonishment, and John pointed a finger at him sternly.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “He’s your brother. You might not get on with him, but you don’t hate your family. It’s not on.”

Sherlock was far too caught up in being outraged for surprise, or a smack, to slow him down for long. He pointed a furious finger at the box lying on the coffee table. “Canes, John,” he said darkly. “He sent _canes_.”

Well, at least he wasn’t shouting anymore. That one smack might not have seemed to do much, but some part of John noted that it had instantly taken Sherlock’s tantrum down a notch, even if it hadn’t stopped it altogether. It seemed like he was just seeing more and more evidence of how being authoritative, being stern with Sherlock could work wonders when reasoning alone wouldn’t have made a dent.

“I know,” John said now, trying for a tone that was firm but still understanding. “And yes, okay, it’s a bit obnoxious—”

“A bit!”

“All right, a lot. But Sherlock, if he really does keep that close an eye on you, then he _was_ going to find out. It seems to me this is just his way of letting us know that he has found out. And—maybe—letting us know that he approves.”

The words had come before the thought had really completed itself, and John frowned as he considered what he’d just said. Actually, he thought, that might not be so far from the truth. It _was_ an obnoxious way of doing it, but it was also very much a vote of confidence. Despite their ‘difficult relationship’, John knew Mycroft was extremely protective of his brother—if he wasn’t, there wouldn’t be so much bloody surveillance. And if John had been a danger to Sherlock in any way, he had no doubt Mycroft would have done something about it. But this—this was approval; it couldn’t possibly be taken as anything else. Mycroft had sent the package to John, and in Mycroft’s own inimitable style, what it said was, ‘I know what you did and I approve. Keep it up.’

It was still obnoxious, but even so, John couldn’t help feeling a bit pleased that Sherlock’s protective big brother trusted him to do this.

Even Sherlock looked a bit thoughtful now, his expression shifting as he considered what John had said. John had a moment to be a bit amused by the role reversal—here he was making deductions about someone’s behaviour and explaining them to Sherlock—before Sherlock said, sullenly but with less outright anger, “I don’t need his approval.”

“Maybe not, but I don’t mind having it,” John said. “I’d prefer the British Government not being out to get me.”

Sherlock gave a snort. He still looked annoyed, but it was much more his usual level of Mycroft-irritation now, instead of the blazing fury that it had been. “Fine. But he’s still a smug bastard.”

“I’m not arguing,” John said, relieved that the tantrum appeared to have been forestalled. Deciding that it was probably safe to ask now, he gave Sherlock a curious look. “Does he really spy on you that much?”

“Yes. What, this hasn’t proved it to you?” Sherlock asked, raising an eyebrow. “It hasn’t even been two days and he’s already had time to go shopping just to make his point.”

“Yes, he’s prompt, I’ll give him that.” John shook his head. “That’s . . . a bit creepy, really.”

“Understatement,” Sherlock said shortly.

“Still, look at it this way. At least we don’t have to worry about him finding out now.” _Or disapproving and taking me to an abandoned factory to have me murdered_ , John added mentally.

“I suppose,” Sherlock said in grudging agreement. He glanced down at his phone, gave a wry little twist of his lips and shoved it into his pocket.

Thinking of the furious texting, John asked warily, “What did you say to him?”

Sherlock met his eyes in a reasonable facsimile of innocence, which didn’t fool John for a second. “I told him I didn’t appreciate his gift.”

John didn’t even want to know how many four letter words had been involved in doing that. Mycroft’s phone had probably smoked when the texts came through.

He cast another glance at the box lying on the coffee table and shook his head, still completely bemused by the whole thing. “Well, I don’t even know what to make of his gift. Honestly, what does he expect me to do with those?”

There was a moment of silence, and he turned to find Sherlock giving him a look that seemed caught halfway between twitching embarrassment and his patented John-you-are-an-idiot expression. John rolled his eyes. “All right, don’t look at me like that; I know what I’m supposed to do with them. I can’t say I’m up on the technique, though. I’ve never even seen one before except on the telly.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, looking at him with mild interest. His irritation seemed to have subsided, or at least he’d been suitably distracted from it. “Never got it in school?”

“No.” Which John had been quite happy about, thank you very much. “They banned it while I was there, and I never got in enough trouble before that. Or after that, actually, so I suppose it didn’t make much difference.” He paused for a moment, remembering. “A friend of mine got it—twice, I think. He said it wasn’t so bad, really.”

Sherlock gave a derisive snort. “He was lying. Or they weren’t doing it right.”

Well, that certainly sounded like experience talking. “You got it, then?” Somehow John wasn’t surprised. Sherlock was bad enough now; God only knew what he’d been like as a teenager.

“They didn’t ban it at my school until later.”

Right, of course. When they first met, John had thought at the time that Sherlock sounded more than a bit public school. Some of those independent places had kept the cane as a punishment for ages after the state school ban had gone through.

He tried again to imagine Sherlock as a teenager, and found himself inwardly wincing in a sort of horrified amusement. God, his poor teachers.

“What did you get it for, then?” he asked, then held up a hand. “No, hang on, I should probably sit down for this.” He stepped back over to the sofa and sank onto it, making a show of getting comfortable. “All right. What heinous thing did you do? Do I dare even ask?”

Sherlock had propped himself sideways against the edge of the table—still making a point of not sitting down, John thought, and made another mental note to insist on checking the damage again later, just to make sure the bruises weren’t looking any worse. Sherlock had said it felt better, but even so, John would rather be sure. With any luck, Sherlock might not even put up a fight about it this time, since he’d seemed to rather enjoy the doctoring yesterday once it was actually going on.

That would be later, though. Right now, he was smirking faintly in John’s direction.

“Heinous things, John, plural,” he said loftily. “I generally managed to work my way up to it at least once a term. It drove them mad, but they could only give me so many detentions. And I was a day pupil, not a boarder, so there were only so many privileges they could take away without affecting my education.”

John’s eyebrows had risen almost into his hairline at that little revelation. “Once a term?” he echoed. All right, he’d thought Sherlock would have been a problem teenager, but that was some seriously habitual troublemaking. “Bloody hell, I’m surprised you didn’t just get expelled.”

“I almost did,” Sherlock said. “More than once. But they’d call my mother, and she’d call Mycroft, and he’d plead my case and offer donations and whatever else was required to mollify them enough to keep me on.” His lip had curled as he spoke, indicating his disdain for Mycroft’s efforts.

Mycroft again, John thought, doing the protective big brother thing. It was sounding like that had been seriously habitual as well, and Sherlock’s resentment of it along with it.

Sherlock was going on. “They always let themselves be convinced. They were reluctant to expel anyone, but I was considered a special case even above that. They knew how clever I was.” For once Sherlock’s tone wasn’t arrogant in that regard; it was simply a statement of fact. “Although they were constantly on at me about applying myself in all areas, not just the ones that interested me. But they expected me to go on to university of course, preferably somewhere prestigious, and expulsions don’t look good on applications to such places.”

“So you got the cane instead.” Put that way, it did make sense. John could see how teachers would have been very hesitant to potentially harm a genius kid’s future education, even if the genius kid was driving them all mad.

Sherlock shrugged. “They were reluctant to do that, too, but when it was that or expel me, they preferred it. For the sake of my future, you know. If my father had still been alive they might have just asked my parents to take care of the discipline, but I suspect they knew that my mother didn’t know what to do with me. And Mycroft wasn’t living at home by then, so he could hardly step in there. Though he did try. He’d come home and try to bore me to death by lecturing me.” Sherlock’s lip had curled again, making it clear what he had thought of Mycroft’s attempts.

“No canings from him, then?” John asked, with a meaningful glance at the box on the table.

Sherlock gave a snort, drawing himself up and looking down his nose at the box. “I’d have liked to see him try.”

Christ, they’d probably have taken the house down around them, John thought wryly. “So you got caned at school instead.”

Sherlock nodded. “My mother would always give her permission, or Mycroft would give it for her, so they had no reason not to do it if they thought it was required.”

If it had been that or Sherlock getting thrown out of school, John thought, it was little wonder his mother had always given permission for them to cane him. And Mycroft—well, given what Mycroft had just sent them, he’d obviously approved of the practice.

John shook his head and went back to the original question—somewhat expanded now to encompass Sherlock’s obviously impressive list of crimes. “What exactly were you _doing_ to get in trouble so much?”

Sherlock shrugged again, deliberately careless. “Oh, just the usual sort of things.”

Can’t have been that usual if he’d got caned every bloody term, John thought. He raised his eyebrows and waited.

Sherlock leaned back against the table slightly, taking up a more casual stance, and began ticking things off on his fingers. “Truancy. Insolence. Disobedience.” He arched an eyebrow back at John. “They were all idiots, John. I really didn’t see any good reason to obey them.”

Of course he hadn’t. John could imagine that only too easily. “Or show them any respect, I suppose,” he said wryly.

“They were idiots,” Sherlock repeated. “If they were wrong, I was going to tell them so.”

John could imagine that all too easily as well. Teenage Sherlock, all curly hair and awkward angles, too clever for his own good, his eyes alight with it as he imperiously told his teachers that they were _wrong!_

“Of course you were,” John said. His tone was fond exasperation now; the image of teenage Sherlock in his head had softened it. “Anything else? Come on, I’m interested now.”

“Smoking,” Sherlock said agreeably. “They weren’t fond of smoking, and I took it up rather early.”

That one wasn’t surprising. Smoking had been a major no-no in John’s school as well. It had actually been what had earned his twice-caned friend one of those punishments. Not that it had stopped him smoking, but he’d been a lot more careful about where he did it after that.

And Sherlock—well, it didn’t surprise him at all that teenage Sherlock had been a smoker. John could just picture him, puffing away in whatever hiding places he’d found for himself to do it, getting a good old nicotine rush going before he dashed off to create havoc somewhere else.

Sherlock was still adding misdeeds to his list. “Some fights. Not that I generally started them, you understand, but I did eventually get rather good at finishing them. Fencing makes you fast.”

Fights, also not surprising, if Sherlock’s general behaviour now was anything like it had been then. Sherlock might say he hadn’t started them, but John would be willing to bet he meant that he hadn’t started the actual physical confrontation. He’d put money on Sherlock having incited quite a few of them with words. He could only imagine the unwanted deductions teenage Sherlock could have made—loudly, most likely—about his schoolmates. Teenage boys didn’t tend to deal well with humiliation, so there had probably been some very ugly moments.

And still Sherlock was going on. “And there were a few incidents in the chemistry lab. Although the way they went on about it, you’d think I’d been deliberately trying to cause trouble. I did try to explain that I was doing science, _real_ science, but they were more concerned about the scorch marks on the wall. And going on about how I might have killed myself with toxic fumes, or maimed myself for life, all that nonsense, as if I didn’t know to wear goggles and keep the windows open and a fire extinguisher handy. Idiots, John.” His tone was scathing, as if the concern for his safety had been completely moronic.

John shook his head in disbelief. Christ, it was no bloody wonder he’d ended up getting caned at least once a term. Listening to this catalogue of misbehaviour, John was starting to think they’d shown great restraint in not caning him once a week.

“There was the odd instance of pinching things from the chemistry lab, too,” Sherlock added, and John rolled his eyes. There was more. Of course there was more. This list was never-ending.

“Only for necessary experiments,” Sherlock was explaining. “I needed the equipment. It wasn’t like I was vandalising the place. Still, they really didn’t like that.”

Stealing school supplies; no, John could see how they wouldn’t have liked that. Sherlock, of course, wouldn’t have cared about the ethics of liberating equipment from a school lab, not when he had experiments to do. Experiments which he’d probably done in his bloody bedroom, or somewhere equally ridiculous.

John shook his head again. After hearing all that, he was no longer surprised in the least that Sherlock had been caned at least once a term. “Suddenly I’m very glad that I didn’t know you at school,” he said wryly. “I don’t think it would have gone well for me.”

“Oh, you never know,” Sherlock said, giving him a little smirk. “You might have enjoyed yourself. I’m sure I would have enjoyed it more.” The smirk faded and he shifted where he stood, crossing his arms over his chest in a manner that suddenly looked almost defensive. “Sometimes I wished Mycroft would just let them expel me. Then I could have studied whatever I liked without having boredom constantly forced upon me.”

He’d been very unhappy at school, John realised, looking at Sherlock now. No, not just unhappy—miserable. Bored, lonely, frustrated. That genius mind of his must have felt like a tiger in a cage, constantly constrained on all sides. It was no wonder, really, that he’d caused so much trouble. He’d probably been trying to find stimulation anywhere he could.

Not that John could fault Mycroft for trying to keep Sherlock from getting expelled. Getting thrown out of school really could limit your options—although John had no doubt that Sherlock could have got where he wanted to even so. But Mycroft was the older brother; he would have been thinking of Sherlock’s future. If it had been John, he was pretty sure he’d have done the same thing.

“He can’t have been that old at the time either,” John said, frowning in sudden puzzlement. Thinking about it, Mycroft must only have been in his early twenties when all of this was going on. “How was he managing to do all this talking them out of expelling you?”

Sherlock gave a thin little smile. “He was always very persuasive.”

Well, okay, John could see that being true. “Did he go to the same school?”

“Yes—though thank God we were never there at the same time,” Sherlock said, his tone indicating that such a thing would have been a fate worse than death. “But yes, that was part of it. The same headmaster was still there, and of course Mycroft had been a model student. Being well remembered gave him an in, and he used it. Add in my mother’s pleading about my future education, the headmaster’s own reluctance to limit my opportunities, and his concern for a kid with no father, and hey presto, I remained un-expelled.”

“Just caned on a regular basis,” John said wryly. “And from the way you talk it doesn’t seem like it did much good.”

“Enough that I tried to avoid getting it any more often than I did,” Sherlock said, shifting on his feet again. “I certainly didn’t enjoy it. I just had to balance that with my need to avoid being any more bored than necessary.” He smiled then, a swift little quirk of his mouth.

“The only up side was that it used to drive Mycroft mad. I didn’t enjoy upsetting my mother, but frustrating Mycroft was rather more worthwhile. And if he was going to make me stay in that God-awful boring place, at least I was making him work for it.”

John chuckled, but even so he gave Sherlock a reproving look. “He may have actually thought he was doing you a favour, you know. Being kicked out of school is generally considered a very negative thing.”

“Oh yes, I suppose,” Sherlock said, waving a hand impatiently. “But he knew I hated it there. I deserved a bit of satisfaction in return.” He gave another of those little smirks. “He actually lost his temper properly once when I was about sixteen. I’d been in more trouble than usual that term, and then there was one of the chemistry lab things, it was nothing really, but they were quite upset about it. That weekend he came storming in on Saturday morning and demanded to know if it was _really_ necessary that I get myself thrashed _every single term?_ ”

He had managed quite a good imitation of Mycroft’s voice, and John found he could easily imagine the scene. “And you said . . .?”

“I told him that yes, apparently it was.”

Sherlock’s tone was blandly innocent, and John didn’t trust it one bit. “Told him?” he echoed dubiously.

Sherlock’s expression didn’t change. “I may have shouted it and thrown a piece of toast at his head.”

John laughed, and then had a mad little moment of thinking, _don’t laugh, it’ll only encourage him_ , the way you did with small children. Amused even more by his own whimsy, he just as quickly dismissed it as pointless. For one thing, he doubted that encouragement or not had ever made much of a difference with Sherlock. For another, he’d much prefer Sherlock throwing toast to mucking around with serial killers. And it really was a funny image.

“Did you get him with it?” he asked, grinning.

“No,” Sherlock replied with obvious disappointment. “Very unfortunate. He ducked and I made myself scarce until he left again.”

Legged it and hid, in other words. Teenage Sherlock, hurling toast in a tantrum and then doing a disappearing act before his big brother could catch him. Appalling behaviour, of course, but John couldn’t help wishing he’d seen it. The look on Mycroft’s face must have been priceless.

He shook his head in mock disapproval, but he was still smiling, too amused by the image to stop. Sherlock was smiling too, more genuinely now, but even so John thought there was still a hint of defensiveness about him, hanging on him like a faint echo of that old childhood unhappiness. His school days had clearly been a miserable time, even though he’d talked about them willingly enough when John had asked.

When John had asked, yes. _Because_ John had asked.

That was what it came down to, wasn’t it? Thinking about it, Sherlock had just done a considerable amount of sharing, especially for Sherlock. He didn’t often share personal details like that. He’d happily share his deductions, his brilliant insights—he thrived on having an audience for those—but childhood stories? No.

But he’d done it because John had asked.

Touched, John found himself suddenly feeling compelled to share something in return, out of fairness if nothing else—even if Sherlock wasn’t interested, his conscience demanded it. He hadn’t caused anything like as much trouble as a child as Sherlock had, but he’d been a normal kid; he’d got up to his fair share of mischief.

The image of Sherlock throwing toast at Mycroft had caught in his mind, which was probably why he thought first of the incident that he did. It wasn’t quite a parallel, but it was a variation on the same theme, if throwing things at your siblings could be considered a theme. For the sake of balance, John decided to offer that one.

“I threw a rock at Harry’s head once.”

Sherlock looked at him in momentary bemusement, but seemed to quickly understand that they were now sharing stories and he should play along. “How big a rock?”

John smiled, pleased that Sherlock was prepared to go along with this. “Well, it was just a stone, really. And I honestly didn’t mean to get her with it. I was just throwing it in her direction. I was only about nine at the time.” Not that that was really an excuse when it came to throwing a stone at your sister’s head, but even so. Harry had been very annoying that day.

“I’d gone out to play and she was tagging along,” he explained. “I wanted her to go away. Typical brother-sister thing, you know. I wanted to throw something at her so I did. I expected to miss. Unfortunately for me, my aim was really bad that day. Or really good, depending on how you look at it.”

Sherlock smirked. “And it got her in the head?”

“Right in the forehead,” John confirmed. “Dead centre. Beautiful shot. Of course, I wasn’t thinking that at the time.”

He actually had thought of it later, but at the time, he’d certainly been thinking no such thing. Even all these years after it had happened, he could still remember the sheer horror he’d felt when the stone had actually hit Harry—hit her and knocked her down, when he really hadn’t meant it to hit her at all—and then the absolute terror that had replaced it when she had scrambled back to her feet, tears flowing, and shrieked, “ _I’m telling!_ ” She had fled for home, and John had fled too—in the opposite direction.

“A crack shot even then,” Sherlock said. He sounded approving, never mind that John was talking about beaning his sister in the head with a stone. “Did it knock her out?”

“No, thank God,” John said feelingly. “Knocked her down, though. And then she got straight back up and ran off bawling at the top of her lungs, and I knew that as soon as my dad got his hands on me, I was dead.”

“Not something I had much experience with, but I can imagine it wasn’t a good moment,” Sherlock agreed. “And your solution?”

John snorted. “I was nine. I ran for it, of course. Didn’t come home until it was dark. Not that it made any difference. My dad was waiting for me, and I just got in more trouble for staying out so late.”

He feigned a wince at the memory. As his childhood punishments went, that had been one of the worse ones. His dad had borrowed his mum’s wooden spoon and walloped him until he was howling. He’d then been marched into Harry’s room to apologise to her—although that part hadn’t been so bad. He really had been sorry, especially when he saw the lump on her forehead, so saying it hadn’t been hard. She hadn’t even been too much of a little cow about it, probably because he’d looked pathetic after his dad had got through with him.

Sherlock was giving him a wry, amused smile. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a stone-thrower, John.”

John chuckled. “I wasn’t, as a rule. Harry and I always could rub each other up the wrong way, though.”

“Yes, well, quite understood. Siblings are such fun,” Sherlock said. He cast a meaningful glance down at the box on the table.

John followed his gaze, his mouth quirking up. “Yes. Still don’t know how to use those, by the way. Maybe Mycroft should have sent a how-to guide as well.”

“Oh, I doubt he really expects you to use them,” Sherlock said, suddenly brusque again. “He’s just making a smug and repulsive point.”

John’s eyes wandered to the box again, and the single cane lying on the table beside it. It had felt very light in his hands, the slender stick having very little weight to it. Still, while John might never have been caned himself, even he knew that the lack of weight was deceptive. Those things were meant to hurt; that was the whole point. They might have once been intended for kids, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t hurt an adult too. An adult who might well want to avoid the experience almost as much as a stubborn, too-clever teenager once had.

“Well,” he said slowly, turning his gaze back to Sherlock. “He might not expect me to use them. But with our new arrangement, they might come in handy. You did say that at school you tried to avoid getting caned as much as possible.”

Those words had been in the back of his mind ever since Sherlock had voiced them. Sherlock hadn’t enjoyed getting caned as a boy, that much was obvious. It hadn’t entirely stopped his troublemaking—Sherlock being Sherlock, of course his desire to relieve his boredom had always eventually won out over his desire not to be caned. But it _had_ curtailed it; it _had_ kept him in check, at least for a limited amount of time. There was no reason to think the same principle might not apply now. And since not keeping Sherlock in check might well mean him getting seriously hurt—or worse, the way he was going—John was quite prepared to use anything that might have the desired effect.

As he spoke, Sherlock went very still, watching John with suddenly wide and wary eyes. After a long moment he said flatly, “You’re not serious.”

In return, John gave him a look that was entirely serious. “We could call it a last resort. The ultimate sanction.” He stopped, then added mildly but pointedly, “Sherlock, if I’m going to be punishing you for bad behaviour, we’re going to need some different grades of punishment. This can be the top grade.”

Sherlock hadn’t moved, his eyes still fixed on John’s face. “You wouldn’t. Not really.”

“If you did something bad enough, like playing silly buggers with a serial killer again, then yes, really, I would,” John said firmly. “I’m not talking about caning you for every little bit of misbehaviour, but I think it could be a good deterrent to you doing anything too mad.”

Sherlock abruptly straightened from where he was leaning on the table, his body jerking upright in one swift contraction of muscle. “You just said you don’t know how to use them,” he said tensely.

“I can learn,” John replied. “How hard can it be?”

Sherlock rocked up once onto the balls of his feet, then went still again, his expression caught somewhere between haughty and frustrated. “There’s a certain technique involved.”

“I’ll work it out,” John assured him, in the same even tone.

“No.” The word was snapped out, as Sherlock crossed his arms over his chest and glared at John. “No, I don’t want you to.”

Well, finally, there was the ‘no’ John had been expecting to hear right from the start. Despite the enormity of what had been happening between them, this was the first time Sherlock had actually said no to anything John had put to him. Oh, he’d argued and danced around it over the issue of John seeing the damage, but he hadn’t actually said it. The fact that he was saying it now obviously meant that this was something they’d need to talk about, and have a proper discussion so that they could work out the limits of what they were doing here.

Right after John made sure that Sherlock actually meant it, of course. Because frankly he wasn’t sure at all. There was something about Sherlock’s ‘no’ that struck John as not entirely sincere. Sherlock wasn’t the only one who could read things from people, after all, and what John was reading from him right now was ‘no’ with a heavy underlay of ‘I don’t really mean it’.

He had to be sure, though. And he thought the best way to do that was just to ask Sherlock outright.

He leaned back on the sofa, crossing his arms over his own chest in a much more relaxed mimic of Sherlock’s tight stance. “Are you really saying no?” he asked bluntly. “Sherlock, if you are, then I want to know, because if you are, then we’ll talk about it, and work things out between us. This arrangement is new for both of us, there are going to be details we need to work on.”

Sherlock was silent. But John hadn’t missed the uncomfortable little shift he’d made as John spoke of talking and working things out. Sherlock didn’t like that idea; that wasn’t what he was looking to get out of this. He didn’t want to talk and work things out. But at the same time, that sense of ‘I don’t really mean it’ was still there, John was sure of it. Sherlock didn’t want to talk, but he didn’t want John to just acquiesce either.

And then it hit him. This was another power play.

The ones Sherlock had tried on yesterday had all been much more overt, but then, Sherlock had still been crashing after the end of the case, exhausted from lack of food and sleep. He was much more himself today, much more able to play games. This was another power play, but of a different kind: Sherlock was saying no to see if John would cave, to see if he could tell a serious no from an insincere one. Oh, he wasn’t keen on being caned, either, John was quite sure of that. But he wasn’t so reluctant as to actually refuse. This was boundary pushing, to see if John would give in or if he would work it out and keep laying down the law.

Fortunately, John was getting quite nicely into the mindset of laying down the law.

He smiled, slowly, giving Sherlock a look that said quite clearly, _I know what you’re doing_.

“But you’re not really saying no, are you,” he said, making the question into a statement. “You’re saying a token no. You don’t want to be caned, but not so much that you’d actually refuse. You just want to see if I’ll back off. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Sherlock still didn’t reply, but something flickered in his eyes. He tightened his arms across his chest and looked away. There was something endearingly young in the gesture, and John gentled his voice automatically in reaction to it.

“It’s fine, you know,” he said. “You can say a token no. You can tell me you don’t want it. And you can kick up all the fuss you like if and when I end up giving it to you. So long as I know that’s all it is. So long as I know that underneath any token no you might say, you trust me to do this for you.”

That really was what it came down to, he thought. Sherlock had to trust him to do this. And he did, or he’d never have agreed to it in the first place, but maybe they both needed to have it put into words.

“So you can just tell me right now,” he finished more firmly. “Is that all this is?”

There was a long pause. Finally Sherlock met his eyes again, and John saw him swallow hard before he nodded once, briefly.

This laying down the law thing really was working amazingly well.

John was sincerely touched that Sherlock not only trusted him but would also admit to it, but he kept his voice firm, not wanting to break his authoritative flow.

“All right then. In that case, the fact that you’re so keen not to be caned only makes me more convinced that it’ll work as a deterrent. And that means it’s staying as an option. Because when it comes to this arrangement—”

John paused for a moment, then decided to say it in more specific terms. He’d been dancing around a bit himself, calling it ‘the arrangement’, but if they were going to do it then he might as well start getting used to talking more about it.

“This arrangement, _our_ arrangement is that when you misbehave, I’m going to punish you.”

There was more than just a flicker in Sherlock’s eyes when he heard that. He still didn’t say anything, but his gaze darted away from John, then back to him, and then hastily away again. Faint colour was rising in his cheeks.

John sympathised, he really did, but if they were going to do this then they needed to be honest about it up front. He let his voice soften just a little with understanding, while still speaking firmly and insistently.

“That’s what this is,” he went on. “That’s what this is going to be. You misbehave, and you get punished. And when we do that, I’m the one who decides what that punishment is. You might not agree with me about what you deserve, but I have the final say, and you trust me to do that. Understood?”

There was a very long pause this time, Sherlock looking determinedly away from John for almost a minute before his eyes finally, reluctantly, crept back to John’s face. He was flushing in earnest now, the colour splashed like a red stain across his pale skin.

John had waited out the pause, and now he waited out Sherlock’s disconcerted gaze, keeping his own expression calm and expectant. Finally, he was rewarded when Sherlock gave another single, brief nod.

And now to push it. “Say it, Sherlock.”

Something flared in those grey eyes, but after a moment Sherlock made a visible effort to collect himself. “Understood,” he said. He sounded calm, but John didn’t miss the note of strain in his voice.

“And agreed?” he insisted.

Sherlock’s jaw clenched and then relaxed again. “Yes.”

“Okay then.” John let his voice fall back into a more casual tone, signalling the end of the confrontation. “Glad that’s settled.” He dared to try lightening the mood by giving Sherlock a quick grin and a wink. “As for the cane—if you don’t want it, then try to behave and think twice before you do anything mad. At least for a while so that I’ve got time to practice with it.”

Sherlock gave a soft snort. He shifted on his feet, seeming almost to shake himself, and then relaxed, the painful tension appearing to leave him as suddenly as it had arrived.

“Oh, it’s all in the wrist action,” he said. His tone, too, had gone back to normal—that is, he sounded imperious and vaguely impatient. “Look, I’ll give you a demonstration, shall I?”

Now that, John hadn’t been expecting. His eyebrows went up in surprise, and he gave Sherlock a dubious look. “I thought you were generally on the receiving end?”

Sherlock sniffed as if such a thing was completely inconsequential. “That doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do it.”

John’s dubious look stayed in place. “A minute ago you were balking at the very idea of me ever using one on you.”

“And you’ve just told me that I’ve no say in the matter,” Sherlock said impatiently. “I know how to do it, and if you are going to use them on me then I’d rather you know how to do it, too. I’d much prefer you didn’t take my eye out with it the first time you try.”

John rolled his eyes. “I do know enough not to aim at your head,” he said wryly. However, he obligingly got up when Sherlock waved him off the sofa, and found himself watching in bemusement as Sherlock dragged the coffee table back out of the way and propped one of the sofa cushions up against the arm of it, making himself a target.

Sherlock turned and picked up the cane on the table, inspected it for a moment, then put it down again and began fishing around in the box. He pulled out several more and began, apparently, testing them to find one he liked, whipping each one through the air to check it. The noise they made—a sort of hissing whoosh—was vaguely unnerving, even to John who’d never had any experience with one before now.

Sherlock finally settled on a cane, leaving the others piled up on the coffee table. He turned back to the sofa and stepped back a pace, rested the cane across the cushion he’d positioned and gave it a couple of gentle taps, as if gauging his aim.

“Right,” he said. “Watch, John.” And with that he drew his arm back and brought the cane down with a resounding whack across the unfortunate cushion.

John actually jumped a little at the impact—and the noise, which had been vaguely reminiscent of a sort of muffled, squishy gunshot. Bloody hell, if that had been a person and not a cushion on the receiving end of that, he’d bet it would have hurt like hell.

Sherlock seemed quite undeterred, however, and simply raised his arm again for another go. The cane whipped down across the cushion with another muffled crack. John managed not to jump this time, but he still blinked at the impact.

Sherlock seemed to have got his eye in, and after that John could only watch in a sort of bemused fascination as he proceeded to give the cushion what had to be the beating of a lifetime, all the while giving John a lecture on proper technique in between strokes. It was all in the wrist action. He should stand just so. It was important not to aim at the target, but about a foot beyond it, so that the cane was travelling at the maximum velocity when it hit. He should make sure the tip of the cane hit the target so that it didn’t curl around the side, because the wood was flexible. And all of these instructions were given in Sherlock’s typical clipped, superior tones which were _completely at odds_ with the fact that he was, in essence, teaching John how to most effectively cane him.

Sherlock was barking mad, John thought, there was simply no question about it. And if that cushion could have cried, John would have bet money that it would be howling by now.

He had no idea how long this insanity would have actually gone on—because Sherlock seemed to have quite got into the spirit of it, and showed no sign of stopping—if it hadn’t been for the timely (or untimely, depending on your perspective) arrival of Mrs Hudson.

Usually they’d have heard her coming up the stairs, at least when they were this close to the door. This time, her footsteps and anything she might have said on the way up had been drowned out by the sound of the cane, so John was completely unaware of her presence until she actually tapped on the door and came in, calling a greeting.

Caught by surprise, instantly and extremely embarrassed, John froze where he stood. Unusually, Sherlock froze too—with the cane still raised above his head. They both turned to look at her, and John could only wonder if he looked as horrified as he felt. God, _why_ did they keep doing these things in the living room with the door wide open?

Mrs Hudson’s eyebrows rose as she took in the tableau, but she recovered quickly—being Sherlock’s landlady seemed to have accustomed her to all manner of madness, John thought wryly.

“Sorry loves, didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said fondly. “I’ve just brought you up some things from the café. Thought you might like some for a snack later.”

She headed for the kitchen quite as if nothing had happened, quite as if she hadn’t just walked in on Sherlock caning a pillow while John watched. He heard her moving about briefly, some rustling noises and the sound of the fridge opening and closing, and then she appeared again. Meanwhile neither of them had moved at all except for Sherlock, thank God, lowering the cane.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Mrs Hudson said. “I put that milk in the fridge for you; it was getting warm left out.”

Sherlock seemed to have recovered from his surprise—typical, John thought—and called a thank you in annoyingly even tones as she went out the door.

John, meanwhile, pressed a hand to his forehead and breathed in heavily through his nose, waiting until Mrs Hudson’s footsteps had retreated down the stairs again before saying wearily, “We really need to start watching where we do these things.”

Sherlock shrugged, apparently completely over any embarrassment he might have felt. “She’s seen worse.”

Knowing Sherlock, John thought, she probably had—but even so. Bedroom next time. Definitely. No question.

He looked up to find Sherlock offering him the cane, arching an eyebrow at him expectantly. “Do you want to have a turn now?”

John didn’t, especially, but he was very aware that the way they were going, he’d likely end up having to use one of these things for real sooner or later. Better to get in a bit of practice now, and take advantage of Sherlock apparently being well up on the proper technique. If it did come down to him having to cane Sherlock, then at least he’d have some idea of what he was doing.

“I suppose I should,” he said, taking the cane Sherlock was holding out to him. He briefly contemplated insisting that they move this impromptu tutoring session into the bedroom right now, but decided it just wasn’t worth the effort. Mrs Hudson wasn’t likely to come back in the next ten minutes, after all. At least, he bloody hoped she wasn’t.

He waited while Sherlock arranged the cushion at the other end of the sofa, to allow for John using his left hand, then moved into the spot Sherlock was indicating, which was apparently the prime cushion-beating position. Adjusting his stance to mimic the one Sherlock had taken, he rested the cane across the cushion and glanced over his shoulder to where Sherlock was watching. A nod told him that he’d got that part right, at least.

_Okay_ , he thought, turning back to eye his target and trying to psyche himself up. _Um—bad cushion. Very bad_.

Focusing, trying to remember Sherlock’s myriad of instructions, he tapped a couple of times to judge the distance, then drew his arm back and whacked the cane down hard, whipping it dead centre across the cushion. It made the same sort of squishy-gunshot noise that Sherlock’s blows had, and John took that as a positive.

So did Sherlock, apparently. “Nice,” he said approvingly. “Good aim, too. Come on, keep going.”

With no real reason to refuse—and because it was all in the name of practice, and when John Watson did a thing he liked to do it properly—John kept going.

And so it was that he found himself giving another hiding to the already much-abused cushion, while Sherlock stood off to the side and offered pointers on his technique. He was generally approving, and John wondered briefly if Sherlock would appreciate his efforts quite so much if and when they ever got used on him. Actually, John had to wonder if Sherlock even remembered anymore _why_ he was teaching John how to do this, because surely it was just bizarre to sound so positive about the caning prowess of someone who might well end up caning you. But then, this was Sherlock. Given his general personality, it probably wasn’t so surprising that if he was going to be caned, he’d want the thing to be done right.

And if that was the case, then he ought to be pleased, because John’s accuracy in aim seemed to be translating over into caning quite nicely. By the time he finally stopped—when Sherlock seemed satisfied and John had really had enough about five minutes ago—he felt he was starting to get his eye in rather well.

Although if cushions were sentient, this one would probably try to murder him in his bed tonight. John grinned to himself at the thought. He’d like to see Sherlock solve that one.

“What?” Sherlock asked, raising an eyebrow at the grin, and John shook his head.

“Nothing. Just thinking that the cushion is probably never going to forgive us.”

Sherlock gave a derisive snort. “Perhaps you should give it cuddle time.”

That just made John grin again, because for all that Sherlock might pretend to be scathing about cuddle time, he had bloody well liked it and John knew it. He was the one who’d woken up with Sherlock snuggled up to him like a limpet clinging to a rock. Not that he was complaining. Waking up warm and cuddled had been damn nice, actually. It had just been so completely incongruous with Sherlock’s daytime personality. Who knew he’d snuggle in his sleep?

Sherlock must have read some of that on his face, because he huffed and looked away, scowling. John manfully bit back a chuckle and focused instead on putting the cane down on the coffee table. The ones that Sherlock had tried and discarded before choosing this one caught his eye, and he gave them a curious look.

“Why did you choose this one?” he asked. “Did it have a . . . good feel to it, or something?”

“Medium weight,” Sherlock said. “Mycroft has been so kind as to include a selection in there.” His lip curled at the mention of his brother’s name.

“A selection,” John echoed, waiting for more detail.

Sherlock picked one of the canes up and held it out. “Thinner, therefore more flexible. It’ll sting more but it’s less likely to leave bruises. The thicker they get, the more they hurt, and the more severe the results.”

“Makes sense,” John said. He had noticed the varying thicknesses. “I suppose we’ll have to put them in order, then, from worst to—er, least worst.” There probably wasn’t a ‘best’, given what they were talking about.

“If you like,” Sherlock said, sounding long-suffering about it. He put the cane back on the table, eyed them for a moment longer, then curled his lip again. “I may have to send another unpleasant text to Mycroft shortly.”

“Don’t,” John said firmly. A moment later he added, “You probably melted his phone with that first one anyway. I don’t even want to know what you put in it.”

“Nothing I’ve not said before,” Sherlock said. He looked up suddenly, turning towards the kitchen, his gaze sharpening. “You went to the shops.”

“Yes,” John said, not bothering to ask why.

“Is there tea?”

“Of course there’s tea. There’s food as well, and since you’ve been starving yourself for days I expect you to eat some of it.”

“I want tea,” Sherlock said, apparently focused on this.

“I’ll make tea,” John replied, trying not to roll his eyes. “And I’ll make food. It’s lunchtime anyway.”

“So long as there’s tea,” Sherlock agreed, and breezed past him into the kitchen.

John did roll his eyes this time, but he followed, and proceeded to make both tea and sandwiches, enjoying the fact that there was actually food in the house to make sandwiches with. He even managed to coax Sherlock into eating a couple of them. He didn’t manage to coax him to sit down to eat them, but that might have been because Sherlock had gone back to whatever experiment he was currently doing, hovering over it and tweaking at it while he ate with his other hand. Honestly, the way he carried on it was a miracle he hadn’t poisoned himself years ago.

Once John had eaten and tidied up, and Sherlock seemed to have paused again in whatever it was he was doing with his row of test tubes, John decided that it was as good a time as any to broach the subject of some more doctoring. Or really, to insist on some more doctoring, because short of the kitchen table being likely to melt if Sherlock didn’t keep an eye on his experiment, he wasn’t planning to take no for an answer.

With that in mind, he decided to just be assertive from the very beginning this time. “Sherlock,” he said, and waited until Sherlock turned to look at him. “I want to have another look at those bruises. Go and lie down on your bed.”

Sherlock blinked. He seemed briefly taken aback, although whether by the instruction itself or because John was very much telling, not asking, John wasn’t sure. He made sure there was no hint of backing down in his expression, though, merely raising his eyebrows when Sherlock hesitated.

“They’re fine,” Sherlock offered after a moment. “Better today.”

John wasn’t surprised by the protest, given the fuss Sherlock had kicked up yesterday, but he couldn’t miss the fact that this one had been made in a very different tone. Yesterday Sherlock had been confrontational, stubborn and pouty and deliberately pushing boundaries. Today he sounded almost diffident.

However, he was still trying on a protest, and John made his own voice firmer in response. “Not your decision. I’m the doctor here. Go and lie down.” He pointed an equally firm finger towards Sherlock’s bedroom door and waited, trying to make it clear just with his posture that he expected Sherlock to do as he was told.

And it worked. Sherlock hesitated for a moment longer, swept his eyes over John—his face, his body, the pointing finger—then turned and went into his room without another word.

The door shut behind him—shut, this time, not slammed—and John allowed himself a moment to silently marvel yet again at the miracle of being able to tell Sherlock to do something and actually have him do it. Honestly, if he’d known, he’d have started playing Captain Authority Figure months ago.

He waited a minute and then followed Sherlock into his room, half-expecting to find that he’d thrown himself on the bed in a sulk again. He hadn’t, though. Instead he was standing rather awkwardly beside the bed, looking as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do next. The odd uncertainty was endearing enough that John had to try hard not to smile, channelling it instead into speaking gently but briskly.

“All right, come on. Drop them and lie down.” He turned away to give Sherlock a chance to do this, reaching for the arnica cream which he’d left in here yesterday.

There was a moment or two of obedient rustling behind him, and then the bed creaked as Sherlock lay down on it. John turned back to find him stretched out on it, trousers and pants dutifully lowered, and his head propped up on his hands. Much better than yesterday when he’d refused to take his face out of the pillow the whole time.

John moved to sit on the bed beside him, casting a professional eye over the area in question. The bruises, he saw, had actually deepened in colour since yesterday, striking a sharp contrast against Sherlock’s pale skin. But that was normal enough, and Sherlock had said that they felt better. John would want to see them start fading within the next day or two, but they still didn’t look too terrible. Still, he regretted having left marks like that. All right, Sherlock had fully deserved the walloping he’d got, but John wasn’t keen on the idea of leaving bruises on him—at least not when he couldn’t see the damage he was doing.

Still, next time he would be able to see what he was doing. Sherlock’s reactions obviously couldn’t be trusted, so bare bum spankings it would have to be.

“All right, that’s looking okay,” he said. “You’re a bit more colourful today. Are you still sore?”

“Some,” Sherlock said quietly. “It’s better, though.”

“Okay, good. I’ll put some more cream on and have another look tomorrow.” John took the cap off the arnica cream as he spoke, scooping some out onto his fingers. Before he got started, though, he settled his other hand on Sherlock’s lower back and patted gently a few times, wanting to be reassuring. “Ready?”

“Go ahead,” Sherlock said. He sounded put upon more than anything else, but he seemed fairly relaxed, unlike the ball of nervous tension he’d been yesterday.

John began to repeat yesterday’s procedure, gently smoothing the cream across the bruised areas, most of which were low down on Sherlock’s backside just above his thighs. Sherlock tensed at the first touch, but John had kept a hand on his lower back to soothe him, and he slowly began to relax again as John worked. After a minute or two he let his head droop lower, until his forehead rested on the bed, his dark curls obscuring his face.

John kept rubbing, making sure to be gentle even though Sherlock had said he wasn’t as sore now. He’d definitely aimed low, he thought, as he eyed the pattern of the bruises. It had been partly conscious and partly not; he’d automatically stayed away from the higher areas of the buttocks near the lower back, targeting instead the areas where there was more padding and thus less chance of injury. Not that Sherlock had a lot of padding anywhere, but even he had some there.

As well as that, though, John’s knowledge of anatomy and his memories of his own childhood punishments had meant he also knew that the lower areas were more sensitive. The fact was he’d been seriously pissed off, and he’d wanted Sherlock to feel it. Which he had, John had no doubt about that. If anything he’d probably felt it more than John had really intended—although, given that Sherlock had got that hiding for playing silly buggers with serial killers, he wasn’t going to feel too bad about coming down hard on him for it. He much preferred Sherlock _without_ bullet wounds.

It did have him thinking now, though. He’d spanked Sherlock—over his lap, with his hand—the same kind of spanking he’d had more than once as a kid, just scaled up in severity. He wasn’t going to be using his hand again, not for more than a smack or two— _he_ was still a bit sore from that mammoth effort, and it definitely wasn’t supposed to be him left smarting at the end of it. But if he used a hairbrush next time, or a wooden spoon, apart from sparing his hand and maybe stinging a bit more, it wasn’t going to be all that different. He’d be dishing out a punishment that he had experience with; he knew what it felt like. All right, it had been a long time ago, but even so, he’d been there.

The cane, though—he _hadn’t_ been there. He’d been pretty well-behaved at school, and they’d banned school corporal punishment while he was still there. He’d literally never even seen a cane in the flesh, so to speak, until today. And, more importantly, he had no idea what the bloody things felt like.

Just how bad was a caning? He definitely remembered his friend at school who’d got it shrugging it off, saying that it hadn’t been so bad. Sherlock had scoffed at that notion, though, so he’d obviously found his experiences to be pretty unpleasant. He’d even said that he’d tried to avoid getting it any more often than necessary, and coming from Sherlock—who thought so rarely about consequences even now—that meant something.

John thought again about the noise the cane had made, even just striking a cushion. That muffled-gunshot noise, a sort of whipping crack that had been enough to make him jump the first time Sherlock had done it. Really, that thing had sounded bloody vicious. And it had felt pretty vicious as well, when John had tried it—light and fast and all that whipping velocity translated into such a small area of impact. Really, there was no way that a caning wouldn’t hurt, and John decided in that moment that his long ago schoolmate must have been lying through his teeth.

But the question that was really bothering him now was, would it really be fair for him to use one of those things on Sherlock when he, himself, had no idea what they felt like? How was he supposed to know what was an appropriate punishment if he had so little idea about what he was doling out? Especially since he knew now that he couldn’t necessarily trust Sherlock’s reactions to guide him. All right, he’d be able to see the marks he was leaving, but he wasn’t even sure how telltale they would be.

Really, it was John’s innate sense of fairness speaking up here, more than anything else. He fully intended to take this new arrangement seriously—he wasn’t doing this for kicks; he wanted to keep Sherlock _safe_. Sherlock _needed_ this, and even Sherlock himself seemed to know that, since he’d bloody well gone along with it, which was amazing in itself. The trust he was showing John by agreeing to this, by letting him do this, was immense. John planned to honour that trust with everything he had. And if it came down to caning Sherlock, the idea that he might not know what he was doing, that he might go too far without realising it, felt awfully like a breach of that trust.

The solution, however, was—what?

Not using the canes at all was one option, certainly. Shove the lot in a wardrobe somewhere and never touch them. Easily done, and yet . . . and yet.

The problem was that the bloody things seemed to have the real potential to be effective. Sherlock didn’t want to be caned. As a kid, the threat of a caning had actually made him amend his behaviour to try to avoid it, at least for limited periods of time until he got too bored. And in his quest to keep Sherlock alive and undamaged, that was a weapon that John didn’t really want to arbitrarily remove from his arsenal.

So what was the other option? Well, it was fairly obvious, really. He needed to know what a caning felt like.

It wasn’t like it would be hard to arrange. They had canes. Sherlock knew how to use them. John just had to ask him for a demonstration. Sherlock was practical and he certainly wasn’t squeamish; John couldn’t see him refusing.

He thought about it, then thought about it again. Inwardly cringed, just a little. And then he mentally squared his shoulders and thought, _Oh, Christ. Why not?_

The end result of years of being a doctor and in the military: once John Watson had thought a situation through, he made decisions quickly and effectively.

He’d been so caught up in making his decision, however, that he hadn’t noticed he’d got distracted from his ministrations. Sherlock’s voice, flat but with a hint of curiosity, pulled him back to reality.

“John?”

“What?”

Sherlock shifted slightly. “You stopped rubbing a minute and a half ago and now you’ve just got your hand on my backside.”

John glanced down at his hand, noted that Sherlock was correct, and promptly cracked up.

“Sorry,” he said, in between extremely undignified giggles. “Got distracted.” He removed his hand from the area in question and patted Sherlock’s back with the other one. “You’re all done,” he managed to say, still trying to fight back his snickering.

Sherlock slid off the bed on the other side and replaced his pants and trousers, then turned to give John a curious, faintly wary look. “My backside can’t possibly be that amusing.”

That sent John into a new fit of giggles, and he had to take several very deep and deliberate breaths before he was able to get them even vaguely under control. “No, sorry—” He waved a hand at Sherlock in a ‘wait just a minute’ sort of gesture, and took a few more deep breaths.

“No,” he went on finally, once he’d managed to stop laughing. “No, I just got distracted, and then—well. Just laughing at myself, really.”

“Distracted,” Sherlock repeated. “By?”

John grinned a little. Trust Sherlock to zero right in on that. Well, he might as well just say it; he’d made the decision and he’d have to ask sooner or later.

“By thinking about how I’m not sure it’s fair if I’m going to use a cane on you when I have no idea what it feels like.”

“Ah,” Sherlock said, in a manner which implied he knew exactly where John’s thoughts had led on this matter. “And your solution is?”

“You’ll have to give me a demonstration. On me.”

Sherlock nodded, as if he’d been expecting just that answer. “You’re very fair-minded, John,” he said.

“I do try,” John said wryly. “So, will you?”

“Yes, of course,” Sherlock said with a shrug.

Well, that was easy.

In fact it was so easy that twenty minutes later, upstairs in his bedroom along with Sherlock and the box of canes, John couldn’t help the little part of him that was wishing it hadn’t been quite so easy.

After a moment, though, he mentally snorted at this, reminding himself that he’d been _shot_ for Christ’s sake, and it was highly unlikely that the cane was going to feel worse than _that_. Deciding to just do this as stoically and practically as he could, he turned to Sherlock and spread his hands in a ‘what next?’ gesture.

“Okay,” he said. “You’re the one who’s familiar with this. Procedure, please?”

Sherlock was eyeing the furniture in the room. “You could bend over the chair, but I think the bed would be better,” he said. “As for the rest, I need some direction from you. Which cane and how many?”

John shrugged. “I don’t know. Six of the best was the usual thing, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed. “But you didn’t usually get six the first time.”

“How many did you get? The first time?” John asked.

“Three.”

“And how old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

“I’m a bit older than that,” John said wryly. “I can probably manage at least four.”

“All right.” Sherlock looked down at the box he was holding. “And which cane?”

“You’re the one who’s got the feel for them,” John said, remembering Sherlock’s testing procedure downstairs before he’d found one he liked. “You choose. Maybe you should use a couple of different ones. This is meant to be a demonstration.”

Sherlock nodded, seeming to approve of this idea. “Yes, that would work. Say two with a lighter one, and one each with a medium and a heavy one. That should be enough to give you an idea.”

“If you say so,” John said. As Sherlock began to rummage in the box, he turned and regarded the low footboard on his bed, trying to ignore the little flutter that had started in the pit of his stomach. It was awfully similar to the one he used to get as a kid when he knew he was going to get spanked, and it was _ridiculous_ , is what it was.

“Right,” he said, firmly telling himself to stop being ridiculous. “Drop trou, then, I suppose.” He’d be tempted to leave them up except that he was wearing jeans, and that seemed just a bit unsporting, and would probably ruin the point of the entire exercise.

“You can leave your pants on if you like,” Sherlock said from behind him. “They aren’t going to make much difference.”

How comforting, John thought wryly, but he decided to take Sherlock up on that. All right, if he was being really fair he probably ought to take it bare—because Sherlock was going to be getting his bare, if it came to that—but then, this was only a demonstration.

He positioned himself at the end of the bed and unbuttoned his jeans. “Have you got what you’re after, then?” he asked, looking over his shoulder. Sherlock nodded, straightening up from where he’d been digging in the box, canes in hand.

“Brilliant,” John said ruefully. Deciding to just get it over with, he unzipped his jeans and shoved them down to his knees, then bent over the footboard, bracing himself with his forearms on the bed.

“Right,” he said. “Go to it, then.”

He heard Sherlock move behind him, sensed him take up a position behind and to his left. There was a brief pause, and then he felt the cane rest lightly across his backside. And he most assuredly did not flinch.

“The first one might be a bit of a shock,” Sherlock told him, and that was all the warning John had before the cane withdrew and came whipping back down, landing with another of those smothered-gunshot noises full across his bottom.

The noise made him jump, but the sensation took a moment to catch up. He had a moment to think dubiously, _okay, that’s not so bad_ , and then the sensation _did_ catch up and all he could think was _bloody hell!_

He sucked in his breath sharply in reaction, genuinely startled by just how much it stung. Okay, no, it didn’t compare with being shot, but it still wasn’t at all pleasant. He managed not to move apart from his initial jump, but he could feel how his body had tensed, his muscles locking tight as he tried to cope with the pain.

“All right?” Sherlock asked from behind him.

John sucked in another breath and replied, trying to keep his voice steady. “Yeah. Ow, though. Bloody hell.”

“Yes, quite,” Sherlock agreed. “Keep going?”

“We said four,” John replied determinedly, bracing himself. “Go again.”

He felt the cane touch again, then lift—and then there was the same muted cracking noise as it landed, and he jumped again at the sharpness of the sound, unable to help himself.

Again, it was a moment before the sensation hit him, and when it did he clenched both fists quite hard into the duvet as it washed over him and he realised that this one actually hurt quite a bit more. Cumulative effect, then. Well, bugger.

He gulped in a breath and blew it out hard, using the act to steady himself. Behind him, he could hear Sherlock shifting about—putting the first cane down and picking up the next.

“This one’s heavier,” Sherlock warned. “It’ll hurt more.”

“Brilliant,” John said grimly, putting his head down and trying to brace again.

Touch, lift—and _crack_. Lower this time, underneath where the first two strokes had landed. And bloody hell, Sherlock was right. It did hurt more. Quite a lot more, in fact.

“Jesus Christ,” John muttered, gripping the duvet for dear life now. Bloody buggering fuck, but that stung.

“Still want the last one?” Sherlock asked.

Definitely not, John thought ruefully. Of course, what he said was, “Yeah, go on.” He ignored the note of strain in his voice, telling himself that he was quite entitled to sound a bit strained right now.

Another pause, while Sherlock swapped canes again, John assumed. Then came the light touch, warning him, and he breathed in hard and tensed in readiness.

He’d known this one was going to hurt more, this being the most severe of the canes Sherlock was using, but even so, the intensity of it took him by surprise. He couldn’t quite stifle a yelp, and since that was number four and there was no reason for him to keep bending over, he shot upright and braced his hands on the footboard of his bed, grimacing as he tried to keep from spitting out a stream of extremely filthy language.

Jesus _Christ_ , but that hurt. He could still feel the stripe of it—actually he could feel the stripes of all four of them, but that last one was positively incandescent. After a moment, he put a hand back to gingerly rub at it, shaking his head as if he was trying to shake off his reaction.

“At my school you’d get extra if you got up before you were given permission,” Sherlock said conversationally, and John gave a snort of very pained, slightly shaky laughter.

“Don’t you even think about it,” he said. “I think I’ve had quite enough for a demonstration.” He gave up on rubbing the stripes—which wasn’t doing any good anyway—and rubbed his eyes instead, which had actually started to water a little with that last one. “That hurt like bloody hell.”

“Yes, quite. That’s why I did make at least some effort to avoid it,” Sherlock said.

“I can bloody well see why,” John replied. “I’m going to be feeling that for days.” He reached back to rub futilely at the stripes for a few moments more, then gave it up as a bad job and pulled his jeans up instead, wincing at the added pressure.

“Right then,” he said, once he’d managed to regain most of his composure, although the adrenaline still had him a little wobbly. “Safe to say that I know what a cane feels like now, I think.”

And that was a good thing, despite how unpleasant the experience had been. If and when it came down to him caning Sherlock, he’d have a much better idea of what he was doing and how much pain he was causing, even if Sherlock was being extra stubborn about showing it. That was good. Sherlock was trusting him, and this had been John trying to live up to that trust.

And speaking of Sherlock . . . John gave him a curious look. While he’d been trying to compose himself, Sherlock had moved to stand beside his bed and he was still hovering there, looking . . . well, looking awkward, if John had to pick a word for it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Sherlock said, sounding vaguely irritated. “I was just . . .”

John waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. “Just . . . what?”

Sherlock dropped his gaze, scowled down at the floor for a moment or two, then looked up at John and said clearly, “Do you want cuddle time?”

John stared at him. “Eh?” he said, thinking he must have misheard.

“I know it was a demonstration, but still, it hurt. You’re hurt.” Sherlock scowled at the floor again. “I thought you might . . . want it.”

“I . . .” For a moment, John had no idea what to say. He was surprised, he was touched, and Sherlock was so bloody endearing in his awkward attempt to be nice that John wanted to hug him. Which really answered the question of whether he’d like cuddle time quite nicely, and he’d better make sure he did answer before Sherlock thought he was being rebuffed.

“I would, actually,” he said. “Thanks.”

Sherlock gave a sharp nod, but John hadn’t missed the flash of relief in his eyes. He’d wanted to get it right, John realised. Sherlock often had trouble with social cues, with knowing what to do on a personal level, and usually he didn’t care, but he’d cared about this. John had cuddled him after his spanking, and Sherlock had thought he ought to return the favour.

It really was seriously endearing, but John made sure to keep the grin he was feeling off his face. Instead, he toed off his shoes and eased himself onto the bed, carefully staying on his side. Sherlock removed his shoes too, and after a moment of hesitation, slid onto the bed beside him. He also made sure to stay on his side, so they ended up facing each other.

“Does it work this way?” Sherlock asked after a moment, his brow creasing as he took in their positions.

John let himself grin this time. “It can do. Roll over,” he said, gesturing for Sherlock to turn to face the other way. Sherlock cast him a dubious look, but obeyed, and once he’d settled again John spooned up behind him, draping an arm around Sherlock’s middle. “See? Still works.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, sounding vaguely surprised. John tightened his arm around him and rested his cheek against Sherlock’s back, enjoying the warmth of another body against his. His backside hurt like hell, but even with the still fierce stinging, he almost felt like he could sleep.

“I might take a nap for a bit,” he said. “All right?”

“Fine,” Sherlock said. His tone was flat, as bland as if he was talking about making tea, but John felt him shift backwards ever so slightly, as if he was trying to tuck himself into the embrace.

He smiled. _Snuggle in your sleep all you want_ , he told Sherlock in his head, and closed his eyes. A nap sounded really good right about now.

A cuddly nap would only make it better.

 

**Author's Note:**

> John’s story about throwing a stone at Harry as a child was borrowed from a friend of mine, who actually did that to his sister as a kid. He swears to this day he didn’t think it would really hit her.


End file.
